


The Adventure of the 'Day Dream'

by FanficCornerWriter19



Series: His Reason For Pride [9]
Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen, The Scarlet Pimpernel - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, I'm not sorry, It's Darcy not Andrew, Multi, the Dover scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-03-15 20:37:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13621239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanficCornerWriter19/pseuds/FanficCornerWriter19
Summary: Darcy is enjoying his time in London after completing what errand called him there, having a talk with Andrew Ffoulkes about why Percy could possibly want to go to France on his own. It's then that Marguerite Blakeney bursts in, demanding the gentlemen's attention and saying something that drives fear into both their hearts: Percy is betrayed.Darcy, knowing that Andrew was given explicit orders to stay in London, volunteers to go instead, and, equipped with Andrew's knowledge of the mission, he accompanies Marguerite to Dover.Or: How Percy discovers that Darcy DOES look rather French.





	1. The Unexpected Visitor

I sit in Andrew Ffoulkes’ drawing room as we both wonder why Percy has told us he shall rescue de Tournay and the others by himself. Is there something he knows that we do not? Is there something he keeps from us? Knowing Percy, in all probability there is.

Suddenly a servant comes in and announces – Lady Blakeney? I jump to my feet and demand of the poor man, “Where?” even as Ffoulkes delays doing the same by a second.

“The – the dining-room, sir… she says it is urgent,” the servant stammers.

I sweep out of the drawing-room and into the room the servant described, and there she sits, the cleverest woman in Europe but one (to me at least), and the flower of English society, looking worried, anxious, and above all anguished.

I perform my elaborate salute, and she returns it, both to me and to Andrew, who came in behind me. “Mr. Darcy,” she greets me. “I was not expecting you to be here.”

“I was visiting Sir Andrew, my lady,” I say with a raised eyebrow.

She turns to Ffoulkes. “Sir Andrew, I would like a word alone.”

“Whatever you can say, my lady, you may say to both of us,” says he, flashing me a glance that warns me, though needlessly, of what she might want to say to us.

“Very well, gentlemen.” She steadies herself with admirable calm considering the pucker I can see between her eyebrows. “I have no desire to waste valuable time in much talk. You must take certain things I am going to tell you for granted. These will be of no importance. What is important is that your leader and comrade, the Scarlet Pimpernel… my husband… Percy Blakeney… is in deadly peril.”

 ** _She knows_**.

She barely says ‘the Scarlet Pimpernel’ before I am hit with a nauseating sense of terror and betrayal. There is no way she could have known without Percy having told her, and Percy would have told us first! Then I am smacked upside the head with a dreadful realization: he has _not_ told her. Someone else has. I pale. _Is it that damned Chauvelin?_

Ffoulkes, beside me, is white as a sheet, and is opening and closing his mouth without making a sound, evidently distraught.

“No matter how I know this, Sir Andrew, Mr. Darcy,” she continues quietly, “thank God that I do, and that perhaps it is not too late to save him. Unfortunately, I cannot do this quite alone, and therefore, Sir Andrew, have come to you for help. Mr. Darcy –”

“How do you know this?” I demand, forgetting her status versus mine, forgetting everything but the horrible nauseating panic that is building in my chest at every word she says. “Percy could not have told you – how did you discover it? Hurry, my lady, before it is too late!” I spring into action, ringing furiously for the servant and commanding him to bring Caesar scarcely before I know what I’m doing.

“Will you hear me first?” she interrupted. “This is how the matter stands:

“When the agent of the French Government stole your papers, Sir Andrew, that night in Dover, he found amongst them certain plans, which you or your leader meant to carry out for the rescue of the Comte de Tournay and others. The Scarlet Pimpernel has gone on this errand himself today. Chauvelin knows that the Scarlet Pimpernel and Percy Blakeney are one and the same. He will follow him to Calais, there to lay hands on him. You know as well as I do the fate that awaits him at the hands of the Revolutionary Government of France. No interference from England, from King George himself, would save him. Robespierre and his gang would see to it that the interference came too late. But not only that, the much-trusted leader will also have been unconsciously the means of revealing the hiding place of the Comte de Tournay and all those who, even now, are placing their hopes in him.”

“Andrew?” I say sharply. “Was this the strange incident in Dover?”

“Aye, Darcy, it is.” He furrows his brow and looks at me. "Oh God - I knew it! Tony waved it off, but I knew it was - oh my God, Darcy!" 

The servant quietly tells me that Caesar is waiting for me, I turn to her ladyship and demand, “Have you a horse, Lady Blakeney?” Haste, haste! There must not be a moment to waste – Percy is in danger, and I, his follower, must go to help.

She seems almost frightened at my brusqueness, and I sigh, sitting back down again. “I am a member of the League, Lady Blakeney,” I say, and her brow smoothens in relief. “However, I am a man of action, and the moment information reaches me, if I feel I must act, then act I will. So now, your ladyship, you can tell me the whole queer tale on the way to Dover.”

“I must go as well!” Andrew cries. I turn. “Ffoulkes, three are much better tracked than two, and Percy has implicitly commanded you to stay in London. I shall, I feel, garner much less of his wrath because I was not directly told to stay in England. Stay.”

He frowns as he sits back down. I offer my arm to Lady Blakeney. “If you will, my lady?” She takes my arm in relief and says, “I have my coach waiting at the Crown inn.”

“Well then, my lady, prepare to run,” I remark drily, but in earnest, as I clutch my hat to my head.

* * *

“Now, Lady Blakeney?” I say, about half an hour later, having verbally whipped her coachman several times over, so impatient am I to get started. “How did this come about?”

“You must know that Percy has sailed for Calais, I presume for some lonely part of the coast, and Chauvelin is on his track. He has posted for Dover, and will cross the Channel probably tonight. What do you think will happen?”

I am silent. I know to what she refers.

“Percy will arrive at his destination; unconscious of being followed he will seek out de Tournay and the others—among these is my brother—he will seek them out, one after another, not knowing that the sharpest eyes in the world are watching his every movement. When nothing more need be gained from him, and he is ready to come back to England, with those whom he has gone so bravely to save, the doors of the trap will close upon him, and he will be sent to end his noble life upon the guillotine.”

Still I stay silent. I remember the lonely night, months ago, when Percy let me look at his scarred heart, the wound of which was torn there by Marguerite Blakeney. He is my leader, but by God I feel the need to protect him. He is, after all, my friend. 

“You do not trust me,” she cries passionately. “Oh God! Cannot you see that I am in deadly earnest? Man, man,” she adds, while with her tiny hands she seizes me suddenly by the shoulders, forcing me to look straight at her, “tell me, do I look like that vilest thing on earth—a woman who would betray her own husband?”

“May I speak frankly?” I reply, curtly.

“Yes! Do.”

“Then I say _yes!_ You do not know – you can scarcely _conceive_ of – how heartbroken Percy was to hear the news I am very sure you know of,” I tell her angrily. Without the fetters of rank and title, I am allowed to speak my mind, and God, I am furious! To me this woman is a sword who tore my lord’s heart in two. I am loyal as a hound and resentful as rock – I never forget an injury.

She looks shocked and guilty. Well should she be!

“You were not there on my first mission,” I continue, in a fine temper, “there on the Day Dream, when he revealed to me all his suffering – when he finally broke down in the only emotional outburst I have ever seen of Percy Blakeney! He wept, Lady Blakeney, he wept there on my shoulder like a child! And you – _you_ brought him there!”

“I own that,” she interrupts me, in the calmest, quietest voice I have heard. “I will not deny it – would not deny it for the world. I wish for your complete trust, Mr. Darcy, at least for now.”

I remember our errand now. Can I give my trust? “Will you tell me,” I ask resolutely, in a quieter voice than I have used, looking searchingly into her blue eyes, “whose hand helped to guide M. Chauvelin to the knowledge which you say he possesses?”

“Mine,” she said quietly, stoking my rage, “I own it—I will not lie to you, for I wish you to trust me absolutely. But I had no idea—how _could_ I have?—of the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel… and my brother’s safety was to be my prize if I succeeded.”

“In helping Chauvelin to track the Scarlet Pimpernel?” _Well, this certainly simplifies matters_. My wrath is still burning, and rightly so as my reason believes.

She nodded. “It is no use telling you how he forced my hand. Armand is more than a brother to me, and – and… how _could_ I guess? But we waste time, Mr. Darcy – every second is precious – in the name of God! My husband is in peril; your friend!—your comrade!—Help me to save him!”

“As if I would do anything less!” I snort, then quickly take it back. “Forgive me, my lady. I was far too frank.”

To my astonishment, she laughs. “I am not offended, Mr. Darcy. I only wish I had been more worthy of Percy’s trust and love – worthy enough for him to give me the former as well as the latter. —My husband and I have been estranged, because he did not trust me, and I was too blind to understand. You must confess that the bandage which he put over my eyes was a very thick one – small wonder that I did not see through it! But last night, after I led him unwittingly into such deadly peril, it suddenly fell from me.”

My anger subsides, jut a little. She sounds so small, so afraid… and so hopefully courageous. I cannot help but feel sorry for her desperate helplessness – a woman in a world of men, in possession of all the facts but none of the resources needed to use them only for the benefit of her husband – so helpless in this English world that she must go to Ffoulkes and me for help.

All I think is: What the devil is _wrong_ with England these days?

“If you will not help me – I know you hate me – I would still strive to save Percy. I would still exert every faculty I possess for him; but I might be powerless, for I might arrive too late, like I once did, and nothing would be left for you but lifelong remorse …for me, a broken heart.”

My thoughts leap at her words as I stare at nothing in particular, organizing them into the rigid bright lines people know of Fitzwilliam Darcy. A broken heart, now? Really?

Who does she love? The hero, the idiot… or the man? The SP, Blakeney, or Percy? For whom would her heart break if those three personalities in one body died in the embrace of Madame la Guillotine?

“There will be danger,” I warn, more to tell her that what she does may be more than she thinks, than to frighten her. “This world is a man’s, and I hope you realize, my lady, that the risks you run, the perils you face, may all be for nothing – that Percy may die regardless.”

“Oh, I hope there are risks!” she murmurs softly, “I hope there are dangers, too!—I have so much to atone for, Mr. Darcy! But you are mistaken; Chauvelin’s eyes are fixed upon you all, he will scarce notice me. Quick—I _must_ get to him! I _must_!” she repeats with almost savage energy, “to warn him that that man is on his track…. Can’t you see—can’t you see, that I _must_ get to him… even if it is too late to save him…at least… to be by his side… _at the least_.”

I am still more confused. What use would sacrificing herself be? The League would be without a leader, and England’s most precious wayside flowers would be uprooted and trampled upon. My mouth curls slightly as I think – pimpernels and marguerites.

“What do you smile at, Mr. Darcy?”

“Oh, nothing that you need mind, my lady, in your state – merely something amusing I thought about you and Percy.”

“What is it, pray? For I find myself in desperate need of amusement.”

“All I shall say is: _pimpernels and marguerites_ ,” I tell her, smirking. A smile creeps across her lips, then her blue eyes spark and a laugh erupts. I laugh as well, the first flame of camaraderie between us flickering into life. I think she knows I have my lord’s interests at heart at the moment, even as she has his safety at hers.

She lapses into silence for the long trip to Dover, and I am left alone with my own thoughts.

Though I am a man of action, I do like contemplation, and I often think of either very ridiculous and funny or deep and surprising metaphors that I like to tell Percy about. At the moment I am turning over in my mind the possibility that Percy knows Chauvelin is on his trail.

Knowing my lord, in all probability he does.

After some time, I look over at Lady Blakeney and discover that she has fallen asleep, eyes glued shut with the sticky aftermath of tears gone and the warning of tears to come. I idly wonder what strengths and weaknesses this tiny body hides, for Percy to love her so completely.

And I think I know.

She laughs, she is cheerful, but there is an intensity at her core that blazes brightly, calling to Percy’s own bravery and honour in response to hers. Her sharp mind draws his, her daring matches his, and above all the spirit to continue to fight and to live burns in them.

My eyes slide shut as I remember another woman like her: Elizabeth.

Elizabeth never denies the rougher side of life, but she finds her own sarcastic way to laugh at it and through it, with an iron grip to life that astonishes even me, who have clung to it so closely and dearly in recent times. My intelligence finds a mate in hers, with our minds turning in the same bents, though not running the same courses. Her impudence complements my reserve, and I know now that she would be good for me.

If I could ever get her to love me, that is.

When I first comforted Percy nearly a year ago, I did not know the meaning of love. I thought I did, thought that the meagre attraction, admiration, and infatuation I felt was love. But now that I feel it a thousand times magnified, with gratitude to her for showing me my error, I can safely say I know it.

And I know how difficult it is to get someone to love me.

So now that Lady Blakeney’s feelings for my lord have flipped from contempt to adoration… what am I to make of that? I may be lower in status than the rest of the League, but that does not mean that I will blindly accept this change. Percy will be happy, yes, but would that happiness be real?

I dearly wish it to be so. For all the happiness he has given others, Percy is remarkably sorrowful.

I stretch my limbs one more time and settle down – there are still miles to go before we reach a point where we can do anything. From there, Lady Blakeney shall be my lady, and I shall take my orders from her.

 _Forgive me, Percy_ , I think as I look out the window. _But I am trying to save your skin, and your heart while I am at it_.

* * *

I wake my lady as soon as we reach ‘The Fisherman’s Rest’. It is an inn I have often stayed at on my missions, and I know the proprietor well. She stumbles from the carriage in a drowsy, serious heap, and I almost laugh as I escort her to the door and then order the coachman to bring the coach and horses to the stable.

Afterwards, I do not remove my greatcoat just yet, for I borrow one of Jellyband’s horses and literally burn the ground beneath his hooves as I race to the docks. There my heart sinks, for a storm is brewing that will not allow any schooner, no matter how intrepid, to cross the Channel. Not only that, but the wind is also blowing from the wrong direction!

Nevertheless, in accordance with what Lady Blakeney’s wishes would be, I inquire after every schooner on the docks, and no doubt the Dover sailors now think me very stupid – I have pressed and pressed them to see if they could sail tonight. As I thought – they cannot.

Struck with a bright idea, I demand, “When did the storm start?”

The sailor I am questioning answers distastefully, “Few hours ago.”

“Has there been a gentleman inquiring, as I have been, about crossing to France?” Again he nods. “Did he arrive by coach this afternoon?” Another nod. Several further questionings of the same kind follow, and by the time I mount faithful Thunderbolt I am, if not satisfied, at least calm.

I see Jellyband’s worried countenance as I dismount and dash up the stairs to the room where my lady waits, and I almost laugh as I think what he must be pondering at the moment. In fact, my lady does laugh when I run inside, panting.

“Thanks, honest friend,” says my lady, who is still smiling, “we shall require nothing more; and here’s for all the trouble you have been put to on our account.” She hands two or three gold pieces to Jellyband, who takes them respectfully, and with becoming gratitude.

“Excuse me, Lady Blakeney,” I interrupt, as Jellyband is about to retire, “I am afraid we shall require something more of Jellyband’s hospitality. I am sorry to say we cannot cross over tonight.”

“Not cross over tonight?” she parrots in amazement. “But we must, Mr. Darcy, we must! There can be no question of cannot, and whatever it may cost, we must get a vessel tonight.”

I shake my head, also depressed at the thought of delay. “I am afraid it is not a question of cost, my lady. There is a nasty storm blowing from France; besides, the wind is dead against us: we cannot possibly sail until it has changed.”

She pales, but her blue eyes shine with a stubbornness that would match Percy’s had he been here. “But we _must_ go!—we _must_!” she repeats with a strange, persistent energy, “you know we must go!—can’t you find a way?”

“I have been to the shore already,” I say, “that was what delayed me so. I have sailed with Percy many times, my lady – ‘twould fare ill with any small craft foolish enough to venture out into the waters. Still I asked, as you would have wished, and no doubt the skippers now think me stupid – I have asked them so many times. As I thought, they cannot sail until the storm dies.”

She nods pleasantly to Jellyband. “Well, then, I must resign myself,” she says to him. “Have you a room for me?”

“Oh, yes, your ladyship. A nice, bright, airy room. I’ll see to it at once…. And there is another one for Mr. Darcy— both quite ready.”

“Good,” say I. “There is no need for that rueful countenance, Jellyband – my lady’s visit, however unusual the hour, is an honour, as I am sure you feel. I have no doubt that Sir Percy shall reward you handsomely for your hospitality at such an ungodly hour.” I smile. There! That should allay his fears somewhat – I know he has a high regard for Percy. It does, at least a little.

“I’ll go and see to it at once, sir,” he says with alacrity, and with less frigidity in his manner. “Has her ladyship everything she wants for supper?”

I catch her eye, she nods. “Everything, thank you, honest friend, and as I am famished and dead with fatigue, I pray you see to the rooms.”

“Now tell me,” she says eagerly, as soon as Jellyband has gone from the room, “tell me all your news.”

“When I said that it was impossible for any small craft to have put out from Dover tonight,” I reply, with significant emphasis, “I meant that even our enemy could not have gone without either veering far off his course or ending up smashed to bits on the bottom of the Channel.”

“He may have left before the storm broke out.”

“God grant he has!” I remark merrily. “As I said before, Chauvelin could not have ventured out without being driven off course – or better, tossed onto the bottom of the Channel. However, I highly doubt that he arrived more than an hour before us, and he is hardly stupid enough to try to take off tonight.”

Meanwhile, my mind is flying. Is Percy still going to the ‘Chat Gris’, though he is alone? I have no idea; but I do know that Percy is going to go to the ‘Pere Blanchard’s hut’, a little fisherman’s hut near the Gris Nez that Ffoulkes and I were talking of. That is where Armand St. Just, the Comte de Tournay de Basserive, and the other two refugees shall be waiting.

But Chauvelin may set upon us, and I have no time to lose. I shall wait outside the ‘Chat Gris’, I suppose, or else follow my lady in case she needs protection. Percy would never forgive me if I let Marguerite St. Just Blakeney come to harm.

I am drawing up plans in my head – those mind-maps of France really are coming in handy – when I realize how hopelessly restless Lady Blakeney looks. Oh dear – she cannot plan, for she knows not the way; she cannot dream, for sleep evades her even though she droops with exhaustion; and she cannot talk, for she aches too much to think of anything to say. It is I who must talk.

“Would you like to know of my lord’s doings, my lady?” I ask. “There are a great many stories I could tell you from what I know alone; daring tales, joyful tales, and amusing tales – all to pass the dreadful hours we must wait here with.”

“Yes! Do.”

And so I tell her of the night I first became acquainted with the real Percy Blakeney, the night I broke his quizzing-glass (and had to have a new one made for him exactly like the old one), the day I almost spoiled his cravat and got my own soiled in the process, the night I forgot to go home and slept in my clothes on his study floor (to his great amusement), the day he – just barely – stopped me from going to a ball in my shirtsleeves, and, most of all, the night of my first mission when he poured out his heartbreak to me and I took it.

She listens with all the rapture of a child being told a bedtime story by his nanny before being tucked in, her eyes bright with enthusiasm as I recount with a smile all his adventures and his misadventures, and the ones I experience by his side. I never thought roles could be so reversed, and yet here I sit with the cleverest woman in Europe - but one! - hanging on my every word.

The peace that settles over us for that magical hour, I think, stems from our mutual love and admiration for Percy, and our desire to keep him safe and sound. I make her smile, once or twice, by mentioning what a hardship Percy’s height, considered a great asset by most of his peers, was to him in France.

But when I have no more stories to tell, and she is dropping from exhaustion, I stop. “My lady,” I say. “Should you not retire?”

“I do not know, Mr. Darcy. I don’t know – oh! For a better way to spend my time during such an awful wait!” she cries.

I wait, hesitant, my eyes never leaving her for one moment for fear she will do something rash that will alert Chauvelin to our presence. No doubt she will put him on his guard – although I may confuse him, as I seem to have no connection with Percy whatsoever.

She paces the room, feverishly excited, until I rise and boldly put a hand on her shoulder. “Tell me everything,” I request softly, knowing that she could just as easily scold me for forgetting my place in this rigid world as do what I ask. “All your fears, all your hopes, and all your wishes, my lady – I once did so for your husband; I will do it for his wife.” I add, almost inaudibly, “I love him too.”

She turns sharply, and I step back, only to see the tears brimming out of her eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Darcy.”

“Please… just Darcy,” I say. “Both my given name and my Christian name are far too long.”

She sits down and I sit beside her, my eyes making contact with hers. “I want to fly to him, regardless of Mother Nature,” she begins. “I wish I could simply go to Percy and tell him how sorry I am – how I regret having shunned him knowing how completely he loved me. I wish I could have been less selfish, Darcy… less demanding of his love. I had thought him stupid; brainless, witless in his devotion… and… and I thought that his love could surely bear what test I meant to put on it.

“Now I discover that it was not his love that died that day, it was his trust – his trust in me that I myself shattered by being proud and refusing to give him an explanation, refusing him that one proof of trust that he needed… how I wish I could go back and undo that mistake – tell him everything and rush once more into his arms…”

“Pride has been such a failing for the three of us, has it not?” I murmur, a smile flickering at the edges of my lips. “Pride brought the downfall of love for you, for me, and for Percy. How many times, my lady, have we all wished to go back in time and undo some mistake?”

“Percy has done no wrong,” Lady Blakeney protests. “He would not regret a thing.”

I smile. “Oh, but he does. He regrets not pressing for an answer, letting his own wounded pride take control of his reason, and pushing you away from him. Still, he feels torn between love and duty, for if it were not for his duty he could do as he pleased to pursue his love, and yet his devotion is such that he cannot abandon his love for his duty no matter how much simpler it would be if it was one or the other.”

“I feel so ashamed,” she whispers, “that one of his comrades should know him better than I, his wife, do…”

“Pride is my own failing in love, my lady,” I say. “I too let my pride impede my heart, and now I suffer for it just as you do.”

“Tell me,” she says, with the same little pleading note in my voice less than a quarter of an hour ago.

“I cannot,” I admit. “Elizabeth is as dear to me as ever, but she is not the focus of tonight. I love her, yes, but let us not forget why we are both here tonight. Tell me more.”

“I wish I had taken the time to truly look at him, for while he acts stupid and frivolous, he never fails to be on time – even if by ‘on time’ he means fashionably late, he never arrives later, and even then it is always on purpose. Though he acts the part of a foolish fop, his sarcastic wit is still there, only turned towards a flippant bent.”

She tells me many of the times when she and Percy fought over silly things, how she once felt offended over perceived neglect when it was she who needed to ask forgiveness, and why she never tried to see the man he was underneath – for in those last days of engagement, she had glimpsed a more intelligent, sharper, and more intense man than she had known.

I sit in silence, offering sympathy with frankness, mercy with justice, for while I wish to have Percy’s revenge that is between my lord and lady alone. I sit in silence, just barely touching her ring with my own signet ring, just enough touch for both of us to bridge the gap.

She cries; I offer her my handkerchief. Our fingers touch briefly, enough for me to feel her anguish, her grief, her regret, and her newly awakened love.

I lightly put my hand on her left shoulder, just barely touching it. I am tentatively pushing at the barriers, trying to let our love for Percy break it down until we can share the burden of fear equally.

It does.

She turns to me, cries into the same shoulder that Percy once did. I do the same thing I did then, and touch is once again the bridge built between us that allows me to finally trust her, for her to finally trust me. Our worry and our anxiety and our terror echoes back across that bridge, in slowly building waves that well up in me as well as her until a tear I am barely conscious of drops from my nose.

I spare a fleeting thought for our situation and think, ironically, that this is exactly what Jellyband would have dreaded to see. I don’t give a damn about what it looks like; only about what it is.

The waves break outside, and in that midnight-soaked calm that washes over me I feel the weariness in my bones. I let go, and so does my lady, sitting up and using my still-dry handkerchief to wipe away the tear tracks.

“I think we should retire, my lady.” I check my watch. Nearly midnight. We should be able to start in about eight hours; perfect. “If you go to bed now, your awakening shall be timed perfectly.”

“Of course, Darcy.” She pauses at the door. “You _will_ sleep too, now, won’t you?”

I smile, and drop to one knee before her like I did nearly a year ago, hand over my heart. “Yes, my lady.”


	2. The 'Chat Gris' and What Followed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I'm modifying it slightly in order to fit my revised outline. The encounter with Percy is all in the next chapter, which should be posted shortly.

I rose as early as possible and galloped off to the docks once more, only to see a storm at its fullest and the wind at its strongest – and above all a tide rapidly drawing out! I huff in frustration and despair before remounting Thunderbolt and rushing back to the inn.

I acquire two sets of clothes – one is that of an English lackey (lacquey), the other is that of a French citizen. Luckily enough both of them were left in a trunk upstairs, probably from Percy’s stash. I dress in the English clothes and order some coffee, stowing the other costume away in a satchel I shall carry later, along with various boxes that shall be ‘her luggage’.

I dig around in the trunk as an idea pops into my head, and I see the clothes of a Frenchwoman inside. I stow them away – perhaps they will prove of use.

* * *

A half hour later, when Lady Blakeney comes down at last, I am scribbling down the map of France that I keep in my head. I stand, I tell her the sad news, and I see the despair overwhelm her when I inform her that, with my experience as a sailor aboard the _Day Dream_ , it will be a good ten hours at the very least before we can start. The tide will be out by the time the storm and winds abate.

We spend a tireless, restless day at ‘The Fisherman’s Rest’—ironic name, that!—I in energetically planning and writing out factors that must needs be out of my control, and her in a sort of dazed trance in which I know she makes plans of her own.

I take in sustenance though it has flavours dulled by my own energy, burning it down into pure action: I pace, I ride, I walk, or I plan – anything but staying remotely, dispassionately still! My lady, however, sits there hour after weary hour, looking out the window in a distant way that tells me something else – or otherwise nothing at all – is going on in that keen mind.

I go down to the pier and at once seize upon a happy piece of news to bear to Lady Blakeney today – we have passage as soon as the tide is favourable: the skipper of the _Foam Crest_ has agreed to take us. She starts doing little things by which I know she is less anxious.

At five o’clock she, shadowed by me dressed as her lackey, makes her way down to the shore, me transporting the ‘luggage’, to the _Foam Crest_. I hear a voice with a not-quite-perfect English accent, and I get a shock.

On the beach with us stands Chauvelin – or at least I think he is Chauvelin, for who else could have that peculiar half-stoop to the shoulders, who else could have those pale fox-like eyes? I cannot truly recognise him, for he wears the attire of a French _cure_ – a priest. I almost laugh, but I steady myself once I hear what he is doing: bargaining for a vessel to take him to Calais immediately.

Cataloguing this fact into my mind, I follow Lady Blakeney up the gangplank onto the schooner, and we start. I stand behind her, not only to keep up appearances as her lackey, but also so that she can feel my sympathy.

Gradually the grey coast of France begins to emerge from the fast-gathering evening mists. I can see one or two lights flickering, and the spires of several churches rise out of the surrounding haze. Half an hour later we land upon French shore.

I am back in that country where at this very moment men slaughter their fellow-creatures by the hundreds, and send innocent women and children in thousands to the block. The very aspect of the country and its people, even in this remote sea-coast town, speaks of that seething revolution, three hundred miles away, in beautiful Paris, now rendered hideous by the constant flow of the blood of her noblest sons, by the wailing of the widows, and the cries of fatherless children.

The men all wore red caps—in various stages of cleanliness—but all with the tricolour cockade pinned on the left side. Nowadays every man is a spy to his fellows and his friends; no one is safe from betrayal. Even the women go about with fear and hatred in their gaze. I feel their suspicious eyes upon me with their mutterings of ‘ _sacres aristos!_ ’ and ‘ _sacres anglais!_ ’ that make me glad for once of my lack of title.

Calais is a city of business, and so our presence, English though we are, excites no further comment. Remembering that English smugglers at the moment are much better received than mere English travellers, I growl under my breath. I should have come up with a better disguise.

At any rate, I wonder how Percy managed to get through here, if he went through here at all – for all I know he went directly there to the hut instead of looping back around to the ‘Chat Gris’.

I know the way – I have visited the ‘Chat Gris’ too many times not to – and I step unerringly in the dark, too proud to ask directions that would be needless anyway. I find it, and I knock on it with my stick. The usual oaths and mutterings – I knock again. Lady Blakeney freezes behind me as that damned Brogard shuffles out and allows us in with his murmuring gibberish.

“Oh, lud!” says my lady, as she advances into the room, holding her handkerchief to her dainty nose. “What a dreadful hole! Are you sure this is the place?”

“Yes, my lady. This is the place, sure enough,” I reply grimly, as I take out my handkerchief and dust a chair for her to sit on. “I vow I never saw a more villainous hole.” The entire hovel is frightfully dirty, the barely-papered walls chalked with the French republican motto, the only light in the dark, dank chamber the huge hearth over which hangs a stock-pot. Beside it sits a huddle of rags that I just make out to be a woman, mumbling as she stirs the soup. A filthy dresser stands in another corner.

“Faith!” she says, repulsed, looking around with some curiosity and a great deal of horror at the dilapidated walls, the broken chairs, the rickety table, “it certainly does not look inviting.”

Brogard takes no further notice of us, and at last I take matters into my own hands. “Mon ami,” I say, continuing in French, “Might we have supper? My mistress and I are very hungry.”

“ _Sacres aristos!_ ” he murmurs, and he once more spits upon the ground. I glare as he goes very slowly up to the dresser, from which he took an old pewter soup-tureen and slowly, silently, he hands it to his better-half, who, in the same silence, begins filling the tureen with the soup out of her stock-pot.

Lady Blakeney watches all these preparations with absolute horror; were it not for her resolution to carry out her purpose, I think she would have fled, and I do not blame her in the least! “Rest easy, my lady,” I say presently. “I wish I could have given you a more appetising meal, in a much cleaner place, but while we are unsure of Percy’s whereabouts, this is the best place to be. My experience is that their soup is usually passable.” I sniff disdainfully, as full of contempt for that Brogard as he is for me.

“Nay! I pray you, Mr. Darcy,” she says gently, “be not anxious about me. My mind is scarce inclined to dwell on thoughts of supper.”

I note that Brogard is slowly pursuing his gruesome preparations; he has placed a couple of spoons, also two glasses on the table, both of which I take the precaution of wiping carefully. Brogard has also produced a bottle of wine and some bread, which Lady Blakeney presently makes an attempt to eat.

I stand behind her, not wanting to sit any more than necessary, my fastidious senses screaming for me to run out of this rat’s nest and safely back to the welcoming (and more importantly, clean) halls of Pemberley. She nibbles at the food, and I encourage her softly, “You must eat, my lady. We cannot find Percy otherwise.”

“Nay, Darcy,” she replies, “I do not like to see you standing. You have need of food just as much as I have. This creature will only think that I am an eccentric Englishwoman eloping with her lackey, if you’ll sit down and partake of this semblance of supper beside me.”

I sigh and look around. Indeed, Brogard, having taken care of our requests – minimally, I may add – seems to bother no more about us than to come up and smoke that confounded pipe of his under our noses. I dust off the other chair and sit, batting my now-grime-streaked handkerchief with a grimace of disgust. “Very well, Lady Blakeney.”

I am far too angry to eat at the moment, so I simply watch that blasted Brogard as he smokes. “Confound the brute,” I mutter belligerently as I huff away his vile smoke.

“I pray you,” Lady Blakeney protests, “keep the creature in a good temper, so that he may answer the questions we must put to him.”

“I shall do my utmost, my lady,” I say, nodding in acknowledgement, “though I would sooner thrash the bounder than question him – hah!” I snort derisively, knowing I should not be so cruel, but my mission is to find and protect my closest friend in the world – how could I not be when I am being kept from it? “Hey, Brogard!” I call, tapping him on the shoulder with an inward shudder. “Do you see many English travellers around?”

He puffs on his pipe leisurely, probably aware that I have limited time and enjoying stringing me out, the cad. “Heu! – sometimes,” he replies in French. I could strangle him!

“Ah!” I fall back in my chair as if I was truly looking for this information. “Englishmen know good wine, do they not, my good Brogard? But my lady was looking for a particular Englishman; he is a great friend of hers, and she was hoping to meet him in Calais.” I pop the spoon into my mouth comfortably, talking as though man-to-man – I have done so many times in England and Paris, why not Calais?

I describe Percy a bit, yet not enough to actually go on. “He is tall, and is recently on his way to Paris?”

Oh! That bounder takes his sweet time answering that one simple question, drawing more of the foul stuff in his pipe. I bite my tongue, for I know many curses and insults – and furthermore, slang words – in both French and English, and I would use none of them in the presence of two ladies, however much I doubt Madame Brogard is one. “Tall Englishman?—Today!—Yes.” His tone is sullen and stubborn. The nerve!

I seethe with impatience and anger. Devil take the man, he is literally pushing that shit-smoke in my face! – excuse me for the curse. I could not help it.

“ _Sacre aristo!_ ” he muttered, “that tall Englishman!”

I absorb what he says with little surprise. Percy has barely anything on that yacht of his, and in a hurry he may have forgotten to grab a disguise or two. However, I glance – just barely – at Lady Blakeney, who looks horrified. I warn her with my eyes to supress her scream.

“It’s Sir Percy, right enough,” she murmurs under her breath to me – not that it would matter, Brogard understands no English – “and not even in disguise!” She does crack a smile, though I cannot fathom why. “Oh! The foolhardiness of it!” she sighed. “Quick, Darcy, ask the man when he went.”

“Fiend seize it,” I grumble, my mood black as the smoke that bounder is smoking. I nearly tell him to sod off, but I refrain from doing so as I ask him the question in French.

“He went…yes…but he’s coming back…here—he ordered supper…”

Deuce take it! What is he _doing_? Is he _hoping_ Chauvelin will spot him? The chucklehead! I curse under my breath as I struggle to maintain my composure and at the same time tap a restraining finger on Lady Blakeney’s arm. It would not do to have an Englishwoman suddenly shriek with joy at this point.

I mouth curses around the spoon handle between my lips, greatly miffed.

“Here!” she cries, not quite able to conceal her ecstasy, to the darkening of my temper. “Here!—did you say the English gentleman was coming back here?”

Brogard repeats his routine complaint of spitting upon the floor, and I almost do the same out of irritation. “Heu!” he mutters, “he ordered supper—he will come back… sacre anglais!’ he adds with a surly manner that I am almost annoyed enough to reprimand.

“But where is he now?—Do you know?” she asks too eagerly for my liking, placing her dainty white hand upon the dirty sleeve of his blue blouse.

“He went to get a horse and cart,” the innkeeper responds as he shakes my lady’s hand off.

“At what time did he go?”

“I don’t know,” he growls, having had enough of his interrogation. “I have said enough, voyons, les aristos [probably meant as ‘see, aristos!’]! He came today. He ordered supper. He went out.—He’ll come back. Voila!” With this outburst, the blue-clad bounder shuffles out of the room and bangs the door behind him.

I jump up with a growl. That son of a –

Before I can complete my thought, Lady Blakeney opens her mouth. “Faith, my lady!” I exclaim. “Leave Brogard alone – before either he throws us out or my temper burns hot enough to thrash him within an inch of his life!” I sit back down. “Besides that reason, we have gotten enough useful information out of him, and I doubt we can get more without arousing his suspicions. There might still be spies about as well.”

“What care I?” she replies lightly, “now I know that my husband is safe, and that I shall see him almost directly!” At her tone, which was not meant to be loud but is audible everywhere nonetheless, my panic spikes.

“My lady, I beg of you, hush! Even the walls have ears in France these accursed days.” I run up to check Brogard’s door: good, nothing but his usual coming out of it. I check even the attic thoroughly: nothing.

“Are we alone, Monsieur, my lackey?” she says gaily, as I once more sit down beside her. “May we talk?”

I dare not tell her how her good mood grates on my bad one. Not only are we now sure that Percy is on French soil – and not even disguised at that – I am also relatively sure that Chauvelin cannot have arrived more than an hour after us. My mood darkens: Percy is in even more danger on French soil than English, for while Chauvelin’s power in Britain was limited to some extent, in France, as a powerful revolutionary, he is basically omnipotent.

Percy is in very real danger.

I try to trust him, as I know that Sir Percy Blakeney will always push through, but I do honestly fear for his life. Absorbed in these thoughts, I entreat my lady, “As cautiously as possible. Anyone could come in and hear us.”

“Faith, man!” she teases gaily. “You wear such a glum face! As for me, I could dance with joy! Surely there is no longer any cause for fear. Our boat is on the beach, the _Foam Crest_ not two miles out at sea, and my husband will be here, under this very roof, within the next half hour perhaps. Sure! There is naught to hinder us. Chauvelin and his gang have not yet arrived.”

“That is the point, Lady Blakeney; we do not yet know that.”

“What do you mean?” She pauses.

“He was at Dover along with us; I saw him, remember? He was also chartering a schooner.”

“Held up by the same storm that kept us from starting,” she replies.

“Precisely,” I say sharply. “I saw him not five minutes before we started – or at least, I could have sworn it was him, for he was disguised – and he was bartering for a ship to take him swiftly to Calais. With his money, he could not have left more tha an hour after we did.”

Her smile fades and the glow in her eyes dies. “Forgive me, my lady,” I say quietly, “but your husband is in very real danger – the status and nationality which protected him in England threaten him in France.”

I can almost feel her mind working as she remembers that Percy is practically walking to his rescues with one foot in the grave – Chauvelin stole Andrew’s plans and now knows all of them, putting emissaries on Percy’s trail at all times. That fact puts not only Percy, but the lives he has given over his existence to save, at risk.

I know we do have about an hour’s start on that French ferret, but Percy would never leave without accomplishing such a precious aim – the failure might actually kill him. “Chauvelin now knows of the ‘Chat Gris’,” I say, “and upon landing will make straight for it.”

“He has not landed yet,” she cries, almost starting up, “we have an hour’s start on him, and Percy will be here directly! We shall be mid-Channel ere Chauvelin has realised that we have slipped through his fingers.” Her voice and face are animated once again, filled with hope that I mirror, yet fear to be in vain. I shake my head; Percy, even should we knock him out, would never go willingly.

“Silent again, Mr. Darcy?” she prompts with some impatience. “Why do you shake your head and look so glum?”

“The cause, madam, is that, while you make your eager, rosy plans, you forget the most important factor.”

“What in the world do you mean?—I am forgetting nothing…. What factor do you mean?” she demands with more impatience.

“It stands six feet and two inches tall, Lady Blakeney,” I tell her quietly, “and its name is Sir Percy Blakeney, Baronet.”

“I don’t understand,” she stammers.

“Do you really think that Percy would leave Calais without having accomplished what he set out to do?” I ask, knowing that she has not yet factored in her husband’s extreme stubbornness and self-sacrifice, for what was his life to him when he could save another’s?

“You mean…?” Her eyes widen in shock and shame.

“There is the old Comte de Tournay…”

“The Comte…?” she murmurs, taken aback.

“And Armand St. Just…and the others besides…”

“My brother!” she says with a heartbroken sob of anguish. “Heaven help me, but I fear I had forgotten.”

“I understand, my lady. However, these fugitives, these castaways, await even now with unshaken confidence and faith the arrival of the Scarlet Pimpernel, who has sworn to take them across the Channel into the safety of England. Look at what you know and tell me: do you really think Percy would break his given word?”

“My brother!” she cries again.

I understand; with her wholehearted love of Percy she has forgotten all else, even the father of her dear school-friend, even the brother who was everything to her in childhood. It is for those of us who know what we stand to lose to love so single-heartedly. “I know your feelings well, Lady Blakeney, yet Percy would not now be leading us with such pride and faith in him if he abandoned those who trusted him,” I inform her, proudly. “As for breaking his word – why, the very thought is absurd!”

She buries her head in her hands with shame and sorrow, and I see the tears twisting through her fingers and gleaming in the shaft of afternoon light that sifts in the filthy inn. My anger and irritation siphons away, my heart going out to both my beloved leader, wherever he is, and to his wife.

I know Percy and his reckless courage, his mad brilliance, and his strict, unyielding adherence to his word of honour. He would brave any danger, run any risk, bear any torture, sooner than break it.

I sit there, thinking.

“Faith, Mr. Darcy,” Lady Blakeney sniffles at last, making brave efforts to dry her tears, “you are right, and I would not now shame myself by trying to dissuade him from doing his duty. As you say, I should plead in vain. God grant him strength and ability,” she adds fervently, “to outwit his pursuers! He will not refuse to take you with him, perhaps, when he starts on his noble work; between you, you will have cunning as well as valour – God guard you both! In the meanwhile I think we should lose no time. I still believe that his safety depends upon his knowing that Chauvelin is on his track.”

“The question is whether or not he knows Chauvelin has discovered his identity!” I burst out in frustration, slamming a hand down on the table, not very hard. “He has abundant resources; his power lies in what he knows.”

“Then, what say you to a voyage of reconnaissance around the village, Mr. Darcy? You might yet come across Percy or his track and save valuable time. If you do find him, tell him to beware of Chauvelin’s knowledge – his bitterest enemy is hanging on his heels!”

“Should you come with me? I have – clothing,” I grunt, swinging around the satchel.

“Oh no! I shall wait here against his coming – that innkeeper did say he ordered supper.”

“But this is such a hole!” I cannot help but grimace in disgust as I glance around at the ‘hole’.

“Nay, that I do not mind!—But you might ask our surly host if he could let me wait in another room, where I could be safer from the prying eyes of any chance traveller. Offer him some ready money, so that he should not fail to give me word the moment the tall Englishman returns.” She seems calm, unshaken, almost as though the outburst of a while ago never was.

I obey without comment for once. If she wishes to prove herself – which I sense she does – I shall not stand in her way. I stand proven to Percy already; I shall let my lady have a turn. It is only gallant, after all. For when this is all over, Percy and I shall lose each other: Percy to Marguerite, and I to Elizabeth.

Brogard takes the money, but I say, “My lady, may I run up to the attic before you do, and change?” I hold up the satchel. “I have French clothes.”

“If you so wish, Mr. Darcy,” she answers, shrugging her shoulders.

I quickly slip out of the lackey’s clothing and into that of the citizen, cocking the crimson cap rakishly to one side. I smudge my face with even more dirt and cover up my smooth, rather fair complexion, coating my features in a fine layer of soot that makes it difficult to ascertain my colouring through it.

I run on down, and whisper, “It is I, Darcy, my lady. The attic is ready for your service.”

As she climbs, I caution her: “I entreat you, Lady Blakeney – do not reveal yourself to Percy at any cost, unless you are quite certain that you are alone with him. This place is a veritable nest of vipers.”

“Nay,” she replies with a slight attempt at cheerfulness, “that I can faithfully promise you. I would not jeopardise my husband’s life, nor yet his plans, by speaking to him before strangers. Have no fear, I will watch my opportunity, and serve him in the manner I think he needs it most.”

“Farewell, my lady, and I pray you be of good cheer. If I cannot locate Percy in half-an-hour, I shall return for him here.” I tip my hat and saunter out, reminding myself not to do that.

* * *

I disguise my height a bit, for I am only two inches shorter than Percy, and six feet is still an unwieldly height for a man in Calais, where most of the people here are not only shorter than me, but stooped with age or worry. I wander the streets, nattering to myself in order to blend in.

I limp down the roads, keeping a sharp eye out for Percy’s electric blue eyes – if he is disguised, that is his identifier. While I wonder what brilliant costume he has got on now, I am nearly blinded by a flash of golden-coloured fabric, and I turn away muttering under my breath. But then I hear the humming.

Lord, is that _‘God Save the King’?_


	3. Percy's Orders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of this chapter is where we slightly digress from canon here. Remember, this is Darcy, not Andrew. I hope you enjoy!

I turn sharply to see Percy’s white-blond hair sheltered under a gold-coloured hat sauntering down the road, not even a little bit disguised. No, he is still Blakeney the Idiot through and through, humming the English anthem in a road full of Frenchmen. I swear under my breath and nudge closer to him, joining in their mutters of ‘ _sacre aristo!_ ’ and ‘ _sacre anglais!_ ’

Once I am near enough, I grab him by the sleeve and drag him into an empty alley. “What are you doing _here_?” I demand furiously but quietly.

“Eh? I’m afraid I have not the pleasure of understanding you, m’dear fellow,” Percy grunts, eyeing me suspiciously. His eyes flash with hidden ingenuity, and I wink at him, raising my eyes to his. “La! I…–begad, _Darcy?!_ ” This last was said in a vehement whisper.

“Aye,” I reply grimly.

“What the deuce are you doing in Calais?”

“I could ask you what the deuce _you_ are doing _undisguised_!” I growl.

“Ah, that is all a piece of the plan – the new one, that is,” he replies, unfazed.

“So you know? About Chauvelin, I mean.”

“So I do.” He wrinkled his brow. “I thought you were in England!”

“I would still be, had your wife not burst in looking for Andrew, and I decided to accompany her instead, as Andrew was ordered specifically to stay in London.” I shove my cap down over my eyes as he looks earnestly at me.

“You did well,” he murmurs, touching my shoulder briefly to avoid drawing suspicion. “Is Marguerite with you?”

I jerk my head in the direction of the ‘Chat Gris’. “In the ‘Chat Gris’, Percy.”

“Does she know?” To this query, I nod.

“Ah,” he says again, lapsing into silence. I can see the despair and the hope in his movements, and I smile. For once, Percy is living for himself again. And it is time to get to work. “What exactly _is_ your new plan, Percy?”

“I have just come from an interview with Reuben Goldstein, and he has promised me his horse and cart, and to hide himself away from any peering eyes for the next twenty-four hours. I am also borrowing his sorry get-up for a while. Look out for a Jew, will you, Darcy?”

“Yes, of course. Oh, one more thing, Percy.” I dig a snuffbox out of my hand and press it into his. “If you are ever cornered by Chauvelin, use this. I refilled it, by the way, after the last time.”

Percy gives a small cry of delight. “I was wondering where I left that!” he says. “It was with you all along, Darcy! Well, thank you.” He takes it gratefully and exchanges it for his own non-pepper-filled snuffbox. “Perfect! I was thinking I would have to try and force my snuff into concentration, but there we go, eh, Darcy?”

“Yes sir,” I reply, for all the world like a soldier of His Majesty’s army. “Darcy awaiting orders, sir.” I smile and salute.

Percy cracked a smile. “The Gris Nez – follow Chauvelin – if Desgas is with him trail them both – and take the long way,” he commands. “I have a plan riding on the tweak of a thread, and even you most careful of Leaguers might snap it. Watch for the _Day Dream_ and my signal – the usual.”

“You are too British – your signal is ‘God Save the King’,” I sigh, shaking my head fondly.

“The most British Brit in Europe is what they’re looking for,” Percy says jovially. “Zounds, but this is exciting.”

I smile and roll my eyes affectionately. “Take care, Percy – your lady has only just found she loves you. Take care you do not throw that away.” My gaze fixes on his eyes: alive, sparkling, and splendidly indomitable. That is the Percy I know.

He nods, then says, “Please take care as well, Fitz.”

He called me Fitz. Not Darcy – Fitz. Somehow, in this danger-fraught atmosphere, wrought with hate for the world at large, our friendship has ascended into brotherhood. I clasp his hand and shake it once, giving him that manic, boyish grin we both know means mischief.

“Gladly, my lord.”

* * *

I wonder why I even let Percy tell me to go the long way. My legs are aching and my face is probably streaked with sweaty soot streams by now – ooh, nice alliteration. Gah! Why does solitude always make me this way? I trip and land on a particularly sharp boulder and hiss in pain as it gashes my palm. I pick myself back up and resume my long and painful hike, which is not improved by the night that fell six hours and thirty-one minutes ago. Well, at least my sense of time is untarnished.

Percy’s plans have come to fruition. I watched as he was ‘arrested’ by Chauvelin’s men and hauled inside the ‘Chat Gris’, and had then been on my way. My orders were explicit, but if I come across Armand and the others on the way I shall help them to the boat.

I am a man of action. Too bad my talents are now reduced to watching and waiting, and I hate watching and waiting. I step up my pace, hoping to reach the fugitives so that I can at least help them to the boat. My feet complain, but I hiss at them in frustration and begin jogging towards the coast, the sabots rubbing sorely against my abused skin. God I hate the Gris Nez. I let out a chuckle as I jog on.

Percy underestimated my energy. In all probability the route he calculated and time of convergence was for Andrew or Tony – boys still a little green and easily tired from their lavish lifestyle. Andrew is a baronet and Tony is a lord. I am a gentleman farmer. I can certainly walk faster than they.

I am also quite a bit older. In my twenty-eighth year I am on par with Percy, whose travelling childhood gave him exercise that he never would have had as a rich English baronet’s son. We have had more time to let age season our bodies and to get used to ignoring some of the body’s more dispensable needs.

Besides, I am a little shorter than Percy and in the intervening hours my disguise has got that bit better I need in order to pass unnoticed. With my height, I could be mistaken for Percy and even though they know nothing of me, my pale face underneath all the soot and my rather alien features (I may have a French ancestor, but whatever French blood I had is buried deep, and does not show on my face) would arouse suspicion were I to be detected. So I wear a hood and a cap and a tricolour cockade, stumbling along the trail like a miserable drunk trying to find his way home, which is not uncommon these days.

I arrive above the Gris Nez just in time to see the four fugitives creeping out of the hut. I take stock of the situation and realise that I cannot hop down to help them without attracting attention to myself, so instead I lie low and watch. However, as if he knows, I catch sight of the moonlight on Armand’s hair as he glances up, and I nod as much as I am able, pointing surreptitiously out at sea. I see the faint glimmer of a salute and then they are off again.

I keep hiding, as it would take me at least twenty minutes to clamber down the Gris Nez – it is not sheer in any sense of the word, but it is steep, and not a holiday climb by any means. I cannot help them.

I am acutely aware of how much time passes as night wears on. Twenty minutes; not much, but an appreciable amount. My ears catch the very far-off sound of a boat pushing off, which I am glad for. They are unusually keen ears, but I have never been happier for that fact. Then comes the sound, so sudden my heart nearly stops, though out of surprise, not panic:

It is ‘God Save the King’, Percy’s voice.

I chuckle softly to myself as I lower myself down a bit, onto a ledge a tad nearer to the commotion I know will erupt – that is, until a hysterical shriek cuts through the dead-silence and frenzied rattling on what sounds like wood destroys it completely. My heart stops in reality this time.

_Marguerite Blakeney, what the **devil** do you think you’re doing?!_

“Armand! Armand! For God’s sake, fire! Your leader is near! He is coming! He is betrayed! Armand! _Armand_ , fire in Heaven’s name!” I feel sympathy for her; she knows not that her brother is safe, and her husband craftier than ever, but I am rather annoyed at the melodramatics. “Percy, my husband, for God’s sake fly! Armand! _Armand!_ Why don’t you fire?”

I cannot help but chuckle at this. _Because he is safely aboard the_ Day Dream’s _boat, milady_ , I think cheerily. _And Percy is alive and well – and cleverer than this lot by a long, long sho_ t.

She abruptly stops screaming, and my heart stutters again for the third time to-night. I peer down intently. Someone has silenced her, and I need to know how. And Percy has stopped singing; is he as shocked as I?

“Into it, my men, and let no one escape from that hut alive!” Chauvelin commands, rather faint even to my ears. I laugh to myself: the moon has once more emerged from between the clouds. The darkness on the cliffs has given place once more to brilliant, silvery light. All the better to see that the birds have flown with, ha!

“What is the meaning of this?” Chauvelin needs some lessons in keeping his voice down! I can hear him all the way from up the cliffs!

“I think, citoyen, that there is no one there now,” replies one of the soldiers calmly. Good man, to stand up to Citoyen Chauvelin!

“You have not let those four men go?” thunders Chauvelin in a voice that was probably meant to be menacing. “I ordered you to let no man escape alive! –Quick, after them all of you! Quick, in every direction!” I almost laugh out loud to see the soldiers, obedient as machines, rush down the rocky incline towards the beach, some going off to right and left, as fast as their feet could carry them. I know they will never see me; this nook I am hiding in is the best place in the whole of the Gris Nez.

“You and your men will pay with your lives for this blunder, citoyen sergeant,” Chauvelin growls viciously to the sergeant who was in charge of the men; “and you, too, citoyen,’ he adds, with a snarl to Desgas, “for disobeying my orders.” This is as good as a play!

“You ordered us to wait, citoyen, until the tall Englishman arrived and joined the four men in the hut. No one came,” returns the sergeant. I have to strain to catch this bit, and sketched in the bits I cannot hear.

“But I ordered you just now, when the woman screamed, to rush in and let no one escape.” My Lord, does Chauvelin know how clearly I can hear him up here? Tch, tch, tch, what a temper! I suppose I can hardly say that… but then again, I am the one overwhelmed with silent giggles on a nook above him.

“But, citoyen, the four men who were there before had been gone some time, I think…” Well, at least someone in this group is a bit clever. Not clever enough, I’m afraid, but you tried.

“You think?—you?” Chauvelin grits out, almost choking with fury, “and you let them go…” No, not them!

“You ordered us to wait, citoyen,” the sergeant protests, “and to implicitly obey your commands on pain of death. We waited.”

“I heard the men creep out of the hut, not many minutes after we took cover, and long before the woman screamed,” he adds, though, again, I have to strain to hear this, and miss a bit as it is, filling in the rest through deduction. Chauvelin is, I note gleefully, still very much speechless with rage.

I hear the echoes of a booming noise in the distance and realise it is the report of several guns. My glee vanishing, I crouch down into a tighter ball than before, swearing quietly. Oh my God, be safe. All of you, be safe! My heart beats faster and faster as the moon fades behind the clouds.

“Hark!” said Desgas suddenly. So they have heard it too.

Finally I hear Chauvelin’s faint stammer: “One of you go into the hut and strike a light.” The sergeant obeyed, though I know their result: it is empty.

“Which way did they go?” asks Chauvelin, sharply.

“I could not tell, citoyen,” squeaks the sergeant, who I can only understand because I know what his kind say to Chauvelin’s; “they went straight down the cliff first, then disappeared behind some boulders.”

“Hush! What was that?”

All three men listen attentively. I tune my ears to the new silence and hear the sound of oars. Six, if all of them are being used. Down below, I groan in frustration as Chauvelin makes a motion and gasps something I cannot quite hear. God, with such ears at mine it is quite easy to forget that sometimes even I cannot hear everything.

They have, by now, reached one of the creeks which jut far out to see on this coast at intervals; and I let out a sigh of relief as I realise they are by now safely on board Percy’s schooner. All that is left is for Percy, Marguerite, and I to board as well.

Wait, what?

Since when did I refer to Lady Blakeney as _Marguerite_?

Time for that later. I hear the dull boom of a gunshot again and the vague noise that means someone is speaking so quietly I cannot hear. I growl low in my throat, imitating a wild animal in case one of these buffoons can hear me. I stretch out slightly, and am startled into scrambling when Desgas’ voice rings out: “Hark! I saw something move – over on the cliffs.”

 _Devil take this whole situation!_ I growl at myself. I’ve been spotted, and there is no escape without being seen or chased.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise not to leave you on this cliff too long.


	4. Discovered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oops... Darcy's been found...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you find them OOC, forgive me. Otherwise this whole thing would fall apart and I needed this situation to be different from the Andrew situation. Again, POSSIBLE OOC WARNING.
> 
> I find it difficult to write Chauvelin, so I apologize for him in advance.

Chauvelin’s orders are too quiet for me to hear, but I swear under my breath. Damn, damn, damn! _Fie, Darcy, why did you have to move? You should have stayed up on top, where there was at least more room to stretch._ I am ready to stab myself out of self-reproachful fury.

The men who went after the fugitives we are attempting to save are coming back, and I realise with a chill that they are to be sent after me. Chauvelin points at the exact spot I am hiding, and I curse.

My mind runs through the possibilities, and it settles on biding my time here. I lie down, slowly, so as not to be detected, and pretend to be asleep. If they find me I can at least avert suspicion by pretending to be asleep. Why did Percy not tell me everything? I huff in frustration, though I know I have not that right.

It takes those soldiers a full half-hour to climb up to where I am, even with the help of one who clearly knows the way. I snore quietly – so quietly that I know they will not hear it down below and assume I have been snoring this whole time, and shift randomly once or twice.

They reach me, and a kick from a soldier almost sends me over the edge. He cuffs me as well, until I peel one eye open, playing the annoyed citoyen. “Oi, what is it?” I growl in French.

“You are ordered, in the name of the Republic, to come with us,” the impromptu leader snaps at me.

I grimace at him and pick myself up with the air of a man who is extremely reluctant and would come to blows with any other man, but knows that nobody can openly resist the Republican soldiers. I trudge along with them, the shuffling gait and hunched shoulders of the French citizen.

It takes us another half-hour to get back down, with some soldiers slipping and sliding and me as surefooted as a mountain goat (in order to convince them I live around these parts) but as sullen as a child. I am dragged before Chauvelin, and I can finally cast a ‘suspicious’ eye over Marguerite and the Jew. Percy’s electric blue eyes widen in shock, and then crackle in anger – although whether at me or Chauvelin, I have no idea. And I don’t fancy finding out.

Chauvelin cast a weather eye over me, and then ordered the soldiers in French, “Stand him up straight.”

They forced my shoulders back and my back into a ramrod straightness I have been accustomed to since childhood, revealing my considerable height. I growl inwardly but keep my face sulky and hidden.

“Raise his head.”

My hair is grabbed and yanked back. When it does not slide off, the soldier holding my head straight mutters, “It has not the appearance of a wig, citoyen.”

“Indeed it does not.” Chauvelin knocks off my cap and hood and pulls my hair so hard unwilling tears spring to my eyes and I snarl. He laughs in my face and looks deep into my eyes.

“Brown-eyed,” he pronounces. “The Scarlet Pimpernel is blue-eyed. This is not he.”

He squints with those hateful fox-eyes at me, and rubs at my face. As expected, the soot comes off. “A rag, sergeant,” he calls derisively, “to give our filthy friend a bath with.” The sergeant dunks a grubby little thing that can barely be called a handkerchief into Chauvelin’s hand. Chauvelin then begins to scrub vigorously at my face. I scowl, making it as hard for him as possible.

However, he stands back with a satisfied look on his face. “Look there, men,” says he, triumphantly. “Even in the dark I know that fair complexion belongs to no true Republican. We all know to whom that accursed pallor belongs.”

“The aristos!” the half-dozen soldiers chorus viciously.

Chauvelin steps up to me, barely coming up to my chin. “But those traitorous French aristos have not this impressive height, do they, men?” I bite my lip, scowling at him with the sinking feeling in my stomach that I have fatally failed my chief. I have failed all of us.

Forgive me. My God, forgive me. Percy, Marguerite, forgive me.

“Tell me, _monsieur_ ,” he tells me in English, emphasising the French in that sentence; “where are you from?”

I stare vacantly at his face, as though I cannot understand what he says. He cuffs me harshly and repeats his question. I refuse to answer that fox! My pride – what remains of it – will not stand for it. I hold my head up but do not meet his eyes in the hopes that my disguise can carry me through.

Finally, in frustration, he repeats his question in French. I answer with the name of a very small town.

The diplomat laughs in my face and addresses me in English: “Those features and that height do not belong to Frenchmen, _monsieur_. Bring the light,” he orders in French. My head is bend back as the lantern is held almost directly in front of my face. I close my eyes, but he forces them open.

“Brown, as I thought,” says he, with an eager gleam in his pale eyes; “but men, see this complexion, as white as snow under the soot, and these features, so alien and yet so familiar to me. This is an Englishman.” Then he asks me in English, “Is that not right, sir?”

I will not respond to that fox! Has he not taken enough of my pride? Chauvelin hisses a chuckle and turns sharply to two of his soldiers. “Here, you two; the buckle-ends of your belts to his back until he talks.”

“Yes, citoyen,” they acquiesce. Chauvelin’s mood swings from triumphant to pensive. “And you, what is the report from down the cliffs?” He turns to the soldiers, and sneers, “I trust that you two shall give this insolent youth the most thorough and the soundest beating he has ever had in his life. But don’t kill him,” he added drily, as though as an afterthought. I allow myself the smallest snarl.

But it is I who failed.

I am led away roughly by the soldiers, who unbuckle their heavy leather belts. I bow my head and bare my back with as much of a proud air as I can; there is not much dignity to be wrung out of the situation. Surreptitiously, I cast my eye about for Marguerite, and there she is, in a dead faint. The soldiers beating me must have been guarding her; no wonder they came from a different direction. The poor lady must have fainted soon after the song, when she fell silent.

But hark! I can still hear Chauvelin. He is out of normal earshot, yet not out of mine; I can understand what his two remaining soldiers are saying to the now-angry diplomat. I focus on that as the heavy leather lashes across my skin; it does not hurt too badly at the moment, but as the leather wears the layers away, it will soon draw blood.

“We were too late, citoyen,” one soldier says, “we reached the beach just before the moon was hidden by that bank of clouds. The boat had undoubtedly been on the look-out behind that first creek, a mile off, but she had shoved off some time ago, when we got to the beach, and was already some way out to sea. We fired after her, but of course, it was no good. She was making straight and quickly for the schooner. We saw her very clearly in the moonlight.”

“Yes!” snips Chauvelin, with impatient annoyance. “She had shoved off some time ago, you said, and the nearest creek is a mile further on.” I hiss as the first blood is drawn – one of the buckles has bitten clean through.

“Yes, citoyen! I ran all the way, straight to the beach, though I guessed the boat would have waited somewhere near the creek, as the tide would reach there earliest. The boat must have shoved off some minutes before the woman began to scream.”

Chauvelin scampers back to the hut and inside. “Bring the light in here!” he commands eagerly. The sergeant brings his lantern, and together the two men explore the little place while I silence my cries of pain. Already I feel blood running down my bare back into the pantaloons of my disguise. There must be a dozen little cuts there that the grubby belts are hitting. I bite my lips so hard I taste metallic blood.

“Pick that up,” Chauvelin hisses, as if far away, “and bring it to me.” His voice seems farther away tha before. The thud and thwack and sling of the leather belts impresses itself upon my ears, but I growl deep in my throat and focus on Chauvelin.

“It is almost illegible, citoyen…a fearful scrawl…”

He found a note? _Oh God_ – my heart stops and stutters as I stumble from the beating.

“I ordered you to read it,” repeats Chauvelin, viciously. I hear the sergeant reading aloud:

> _I cannot quite reach you, without risking your lives and endangering the success of your rescue. When you receive this, wait two minutes, then creep out of the hut one by one, turn to your left sharply, and creep cautiously down the cliff; keep to the left all the time, till you reach the first rock, which you see jutting far out to sea—behind it in the creek the boat is on the look-out for you—give a long, sharp whistle—she will come up—get into her—my men will row you to the schooner, and thence to England and safety—once on board the **Day Dream** send the boat back for me, tell my men that I shall be at the creek, which is in a direct line opposite the ‘Chat Gris’ near Calais. They know it. I shall be there as soon as possible—they must wait for me at a safe distance out at sea, till they hear the usual signal. Do not delay—and obey these instructions implicitly._

My blood roars in my ears and I collapse to my knees from the pain and the shock. He is discovered – oh God, Percy is betrayed. How right Marguerite was. I bite back tears and fight the urge to break down and wail like a child. _You are an Englishman, Darcy!_

_And you deserve the beating you are getting, so don’t even think about giving as good as you get. You lost that right when you slipped and let those damn soldiers see you._

“Then there is the signature, citoyen,” adds the sergeant.

The sinking feeling in my stomach plummets and drags my heart down with it. My hands, which are still free, are cold as ice, and my eyes burn. _Traitor_. A tear squeezes itself out of each eye’s corner and streaks down my cheeks, unnoticed by any but me. I bite my lip and taste blood and grit and dust as the soldiers’ belts scrape against the wounds that are already there.

“Which of you knows this coast well?” Chauvelin shouts to his men. The pair who are beating me push me harshly onto the dirt, and I lie there in agony, my back as though covered in burning acid. Through my pain- and guilt-induced haze I vaguely register that the four of the soldiers who are unoccupied are on their way back to Calais to intercept Percy, who is probably long gone.

Chauvelin gave them all a tongue-lashing that sent them squirming, and I crack a small smile. He marches over to where I lie with poor Lady Blakeney, and the two soldiers are now standing guard by her prone form.

“It is no use mounting guard over a woman who is half dead,” he said spitefully to the soldiers, “when you have allowed five men who were very much alive to escape, and cannot even thrash a boy properly.” Obediently the soldiers rose to their feet. “You’d better try and find that footpath again for me, and that broken-down cart we left on the road.”

Suddenly he brightens. “Ah, by-the-bye, where is that Jew?” My ears perk up. Percy!

“Close by here, citoyen,” Desgas replies. “I gagged him and tied his legs together as you commanded.” My heart leaps and I almost laugh in triumph. There are two of us, now, Chauvelin! You will never know what hit you! Yet the sinking feeling remains, and I know the thrashing I will get at Percy’s hands.

A plaintive moan reaches my ears, and I squirm slightly through the pain to raise my eyes. The poor Jew is lying in a veritable heap of dejection, with his legs pinioned together and a rag tied cruelly over his mouth. The silver moonlight accentuates the fearful pallor that has fallen over him, glimmering in the dilated pupils of glassy eyes. His whole body is trembling as if he has a fever, and the rope that should have been about his shoulders and arms is lying loose but unnoticed. He has not moved, kept there by the unlimited force of terror.

I have witnessed Percy’s wondrous talents of disguise before, but never has his genius been so thoroughly exhibited to me – or so thoroughly thwarted by me. My heart sinks into my feet again as I remember that his fear may not be entirely false. I flop hard onto my flogged back, hissing at the pain. _You deserve it_.

“Bring the cowardly brute here,” I hear Chauvelin say. His rage has no reasonable target, but he cannot punish the soldiers with more than his tongue without losing their respect and fear, and he cannot risk that safely. The Jew – Percy – is his scapegoat. “I suppose now, that being a Jew, you have a good memory for bargains?”

“Answer!” he again commands, as the shaking Jew seems too frightened to speak. “Yes, your Honour,” stutters the Jew in reply.

“You remember, then, the one you and I made together in Calais, when you undertook to overtake Reuben Goldstein, his nag and my friend the tall stranger? Eh?”

“B-b-but…your Honour…”

“There is no ‘but’,” Chauvelin growls. “I said, do you remember?”

“Y-y-y-yes…your Honour!” Even in my shame and agony I am impressed with my lord. Percy, oh Percy, forgive me.

“What was the bargain?”

Percy the Jew says nothing, looking around at me, at Marguerite, at the cliffs, and at the unforgiving sky as if begging us for some form of escape. Alas, there is none, for any of us.

“Will you speak?” thunders Chauvelin. The pain is lulling me to sleep, and it is all I can do to hold on to consciousness and listen.

“Your Honour…” he whimpers imploringly.

“Since your terror seems to have paralyzed your tongue,” says Chauvelin sarcastically, “I must needs refresh your memory. It was agreed between us, that if we overtook my friend the tall stranger, before he reached this place, you were to have ten pieces of gold.” Percy the Jew moans. “But,” adds Chauvelin, with menacing emphasis, “If you deceived me in your promise, you were to have a sound beating, one that would teach you not to tell lies.”

“I did not, your Honour; I swear it by Abraham -”

“And by all the other patriarchs, I know. Unfortunately, they are still in Hades, I believe, according to your creed, and cannot help you much in your present trouble. Now, you did not fulfil your share of the bargain, but I am ready to fulfil mine. Here,” he orders, in a macabre repetition of my own thrashing, “the buckle-end of your two belts to this confounded Jew.” As the soldiers obediently unbuckle their heavy belts yet again, the Jew sets up a howl that could raise the dead. “I think I can rely on you, citoyen soldiers,” laughed Chauvelin, maliciously, “to give this old liar the best and soundest beating he has ever experienced. But don’t kill him either. I want him and the Englishman alive.”

“We will obey, citoyen,” reply the soldiers as imperturbably as ever.

“Ah!” Chauvelin exclaims, as though he has forgotten something. “The Englishman! Is he there?” I grunt and sit up. “There you are, my friend,” says he, with mock-friendliness. “Have you not endured enough?”

I throw back my head proudly, but refuse to answer that brute. He would have my lord beaten; I will not lower myself to his level. I may have killed Percy, but I will not humiliate him, by God!

“Very well. I am on my way now to Calais, to intercept your leader, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and arrest him. I am sure you understand, monsieur, with all the English notion of King and country; I am simply carrying out my duty.”

 _You will not answer. You **will not** answer_. My vision is swimming…

“Would you choose a mere man, the Scarlet Pimpernel, over your own safety and family? Think of what your wife would say. Your sister, perhaps?” Oh, Georgiana, forgive me, darling. Your brother shall return, if God wills it, but in shame and guilt. “Answer! Will you not tell me what tricks that damned Pimpernel has in store?”

You will not - ah, damn it, I shall not tolerate this! I am in pain, I am ashamed, and I am enraged. I shall not stand for being mocked. I calmly raise my eyes to his and say, “There are no more tricks. I have ruined them all.”

Chauvelin gazes at me with pale eyes. “Is that so?”

The words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Citoyen, I have one request: kill me. I am a traitor and a coward but I shall tell you nothing. You have no use for me, yet I will not live.” The Jew whimpers in terror once more, but I care not. I have betrayed him.

His lip curls in contempt, and he lands a kick on me that winds me. “Soldiers, thrash him first, but keep him alive. If his only wish is to die, then he shall, but I will not give him the mercy of a quick death. Once you have beaten him and that confounded Jew, return to the creek.”

I have my wish. I sink to the ground, my heart heavy and my limbs weak, and wait for my death. This is the most contemptible and worst death I can imagine. Even Chauvelin, the fox, thinks me weak.

“When that lumbering coward has had his punishment,” I hear to Desgas, “the men can guide us as far as the cart, and one of them can drive us in it back to Calais. The Jew and the woman can look after each other,” he added roughly, “until we can send somebody for them and the Englishman’s body in the morning. They can’t run away very far, in their present condition, and we cannot be troubled with them just now.”

I am hauled to my knees and flogged once more, and when my wounds are reopened I can’t help the one howl that escapes my throat. Everything I lived for is lost to me: I have betrayed the League and Percy, Georgiana might as well be a world away, and Elizabeth knows nothing of where I am and for all I know is indifferent to me.

I bite my lip on the wave of pain. _Quit that self-pity, Darcy. If you die this way you will not die like a wounded animal! Die like the Englishman you are._

I grit my teeth and refuse to cry or cry out even as the metal sinks its fangs into my back and shoulders. But my body cannot hold out forever, and the agony, guilt, and exhaustion is finally too much for intrepid Fitzwilliam Darcy. I collapse into the dirt, and the last thing I hear is the howl of the Jew, undergoing his own punishment.

* * *

The first thing I feel is something liquid in my mouth, which I swallow on instinct. But oh, my back hurts like fire. It is worse than anything I have ever felt before – well, almost. It feels like burning acid.

I cannot even think properly. I drop back to sleep.

Is that a voice? Yes… I think it is. What is it saying? Let me hear it, please…

It’s a sad voice. “I don’t think he will live to see the dawn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter starts in a POV that's not Darcy's, as he's going to be unconscious and in pain most of the time, so he's essentially incapacitated.
> 
> Also, very short chapters because I'm rubbish at multi-chapter stories. My others are still ongoing so I want to finish this one.


	5. A Life in the Balance

I came to, quietly, almost like a river carrying me to consciousness. However, my peace was disturbed by the moaning and howling of that poor Jew, who was evidently being beaten. And with those howls came the dreadful awareness: Percy the Scarlet Pimpernel, the voyage, the ‘Chat Gris’, the journey, the Jew, and the song. Immediately my eyes land on that disgusting Chauvelin, who looks almost as perfectly put together as he would have been if he was straight off to His Highness the Prince’s garden party.

The wave of trepidation fills me. Is Armand dead? Has Percy escaped? Or is he, at this very moment, enduring the malicious gibes and jeers of the very man who tricked me into compromising him? Before I can do much more than look and wonder, Chauvelin smiles sarcastically at me, malice shining in his pale eyes.

He stoops and raises my icy hand to his lips. A thrill of loathing runs through me, and I barely restrain myself from showing it on my face. Yet I am still in some measure of shock, and all I can focus on is his hateful face, and his hateful voice.

“I much regret, fair lady,” he says in his most suave tones, “that circumstances, over which I have no control, compel me to leave you here for the moment. But I go away, secure in the knowledge that I do not leave you unprotected. Our friend Benjamin here, though a trifle the worse for wear at the present moment, will prove a gallant defender of your fair person, I have no doubt. At dawn I will send an escort for you; until then, I feel sure that you will find him devoted, though perhaps a trifle slow.”

I turn away with a shudder, too weary to do anything else. My throat is too dry to protest.

“I, myself,” concludes Chauvelin, “must now very reluctantly leave you. _Au revoir_ , fair lady. We meet, I hope, soon in London. Shall I see you at the Prince of Wales’ garden party?—No?—Ah, well, _au revoir_!—Remember me, I pray, to Sir Percy Blakeney.”

How dare he? When he has brought about the hero’s downfall, he dares mock me about it? My pride is in shambles, but I am too weary to do anything more. With a last ironical smile and flourishing bow, he takes his soldiers and his secretary, and sets out upon the footpath back to Calais.

I know not how long I waited on that lonely coast for enough energy to get up and continue with my life knowing that in trying to save the two men I loved, I sacrificed both of them. I waited, listening to the silence that was not silence. The cry of a gull, the crash of the waves – the sounds kept me company as I wished to simply lie there forever, never having to resume my life with the guilt upon my shoulders.

The strangest sound that queer little French coast had likely ever witnessed or ever would broke that silence. It caused the sounds to cease in shock, and my heart to leap in joy. 

It was a good, solid, indubitably British “Damn!”

* * *

Was this a dream? Was my half-dead, half-sleeping mind conjuring up a last trick to put my troubled soul to rest? A solitary owl hooted in confusion, and I could swear the sea gulls in their nests awoke in surprise. I sat up as if in a trance, knowing and yet doubting where that very British “Damn!” came from.

“Odd’s life! I wish those demmed fellows had not hit quite so hard!”

It was him! It could only be him. I know that voice. Only one man could ever say those words in that order in that sleepy, affected drawl. A groan escaped those lips, and another “Damn!” and then:

“Darcy? I say, Darcy! Are you alright? Zounds, I’m as weak as a rat!”

Oh, my God! In my wholehearted panic for Percy’s life I have forgotten the faithful lieutenant who has led me to his side. And yet – Percy is alive! Percy is not held cruelly by Chauvelin and taunted and spat upon by the soldiers. He is here and wonderfully alive! Am I in heaven? Dear Lord!

I struggle to my feet and look wildly around for the owner of that sleepy voice which used to so irritate me. “Percy? Percy!” My tortured voice, half-doubt and half-hope, comes out as more of a hysterical shriek than I intended. “I am here! Come to me, if you can. Where are you? Percy! Percy!” I am too tired to care that I sound like a child calling for her mother.

“It’s all very well calling me, m’dear!” Percy’s voice drawls, “but odd’s life, I cannot come to you: those demmed frog-eaters have trussed me like a goose on a spit, and I am weak as a mouse…I cannot get away.” The last is said in a soft apologetic tone. As if he had anything to apologise for!

Where is he? The moon comes out from behind a cloud, aiding me in my search. My eyes first land upon a prone figure by a rock, his cap pulled over his face and his bare torso covered in bruises and wounds. I dash towards him, only to find him still unconscious, with dark hair and soot-dusted features I cannot recognise in the dark. Who else is there? Oh! The Jew! Am I raving or dreaming? Could it be the Jew?

There is a weak shifting beside another rock, and the outline of a back is traced in silver as the Jew tries to raise himself with pinioned arms. I run up to him and look into his face – and see idiosyncratic, but no longer lazy, electric blue eyes twinkling tiredly out of the mask of the Jew.

“Percy…Percy…” I murmur, a smile tracing itself onto my lips. I know what he has done for me; can I still claim him as mine? “My husband…oh, thank God! Thank God!” He is alive; what else can I do?

“Quick, m’dear,” he whispers sharply. “If it will please you to loosen these ropes, and release me from this inelegant attitude, I will see what I can do for that poor soul over by the rock.” His eyes are sad as he glances at the man I mistook for him earlier.

My fingers are numb and clumsy, but eventually I manage to loosen the ropes enough for him to spring – as much as a weary, pained man can spring – up and shake them off. “There is some French brandy in the pocket of this quaint get-up – I cannot quite reach – forgive me, m’dear…”

I reach into the pocket and pull out his flask. He takes it and with shaking hands downs some, then makes me do the same. It warms me from the inside out and brings some feeling back into my tired body. Taking the flask back from me, he stoops next to the prone man by the rock and forces some into his mouth. When he turns the man’s face to the light, he recoils.

“What is it, Percy?” Joy still leaps in my heart that I have found him and that he is alive.

“Darcy!” The word escapes his lips in a pleading tone. “My God! Darcy!” I limp over as best as I can at the moment. Percy is leaning over him when I got there, frantic fingers seeking out a heartbeat. 

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s been beaten, m’dear,” he says sadly, “beaten within an inch of his life – and that inch is shortening fast. If we cannot get him decent medical attention quickly… I don’t think he will live to see the dawn.”

My mind flashes sharply with the memory of Armand; dark-haired and dark-eyed, dark with bruises and blood. Beaten by the Marquis de St. Cyr, and close to death as well. He has a sister – Miss Georgiana Darcy, I believe. I flush in shame as I realise that she will likely have the same fight for her brother’s life that I endured as a girl of about her age, even as my trembling hands help tug him upright. Percy winds one arm around his own neck and I do the same. Percy shoots me a look, and I stare him down defiantly. He smiles proudly. “If I only knew what a noble heart was yours, my Margot.”

“Percy, if you only knew,” I murmur.

“I do know, dear… I know everything.” He hefts Darcy up. “To the other side of the Gris Nez, then! There waits the boat of the _Day Dream_ , though my ‘note’ said otherwise.”

Percy elaborates on his plan as the two of us stagger over the cliffs with an unconscious and clearly agonised Darcy between us. Our height difference has his left foot trailing on the rocky ground, but we have to make do with what we have. My feet are warmed by the brandy, but with the warmth comes the pain, and Percy and I make a sorry pair, stumbling through the night with an injured man in our arms.

And yet, despite the aches of my body and my worry for poor Armand (which was very quickly assuaged by Percy), I am happy. For Percy is alive and kicking (well, not literally) and has forgiven me everything. His cheery tone keeps the energy and heat in my body and the determination in my heart, for if Percy can endure it, why can I not try?

Besides that, there is poor Darcy, whose face and shoulders are also wounded and scratched, besides the back that has been beaten, in all likelihood, repeatedly. I was raised in a convent; I have seen many an injury, and I know as well as Percy that he could die if he does not reach the _Day Dream_ in time.

“Insubordinate bounder,” Percy remarks sadly on Darcy’s doings. “I calculated the wrong route, Margot… I calculated for Andrew or Tony. They would have reached us just in the nick of time. But loyal, plucky Darcy, such as he is, chose to watch. He stretched, and was caught by Desgas. They identified him as an Englishman because they were so suspicious of him. He _does_ look rather French,” he adds. “French blood – just a drop. He _is_ a Darcy.”

I never noticed the likeness between his last name and the last name of one of the first families to reappear in England. Darcy indeed!

And somehow, even with exhaustion and guilt and fear gnawing on the back of my mind, the heavy bleeding arm of a dying Leaguer slung over my shoulder, and lances of pain shooting up my feet, there is nowhere I would rather be, because of the other man valiantly supporting the Leaguer’s other arm, smiling and laughing even as his steps falter: Percy.

Somehow, we stumble to the other side of the Gris Nez, and Armand scrambles forward. “Marguerite!”

“Armand!” Percy greets him sharply. “Don’t just stand there, man, help me get Darcy to his room!” With wide eyes and startled movements my brother obeys, with a quick kiss to my cheek and a quick bow to Percy.

“What can I do?” I ask of them.

“Get some rest, m’dear!” Percy calls back over his shoulder. “Trent, take Lady Blakeney to my room!”

With that, I am led to a cabin that is rather cramped, but rather like his study, with dark red walls and white-and-purple covers on the bed. Besides that it has one dresser and one table; no more. Though they are simple, they are made with the high quality Sir Percy Blakeney always expects. I suppose it is rather telling that I adjusted to Percy being who he is so quickly; it might have something to do with how Darcy, being the rational, liberal man I know him to be, though I met him only rarely, is his closest friend.

I turn to the young sailor and nod. “Thank you. Trent, was it?”

“Yes, Lady Blakeney.”

I sit on the bed, trying to rest my feet before I try to clean the wounds. I assume that the crew will not abandon their posts, and I cannot blame them. Quietly, I pick off what remains of my poor stockings and wait.

* * *

 Percy steps in not long after. “…Marguerite?” He sounds almost afraid to use my name after having avoided it for a year. I give him a little smirk. “Percy.” The omission of the distant ‘Sir’ before his name seems to have put him a bit more at ease, but he still approaches with caution, and jumps when I laugh and tell him, “I am not a wild animal that will bite, Percy. And I truly am very, very sorry.”

I hope he knows I mean that with all the loneliness and frustration of the year of foolishness.

He sighs and ruffles his hair with a tired smile. “At least we all got away safely… well, except for Darcy – but that is not your doing. You had no idea he was there.” His eyes harden. “The idiot! He has no one but himself to blame for his injuries, and if he dies –” he bites his lip sharply at this “– he will have no one to blame but himself.”

“You sound as though you are convincing yourself, not me,” I point out.

Percy lets out a breath and tentatively sits on the end of the bed. “I am. Darcy is my lieutenant more than any of the others – don’t tell them I said that – and more than that, even. He is my best friend. He is the only one in that dreadful year… who understood even remotely what it felt like.”

I wonder what he means, but he answers without my asking when he jumps up and paces agitatedly, averting his eyes. “I am demmed rubbish at this – sink me if I’m not – but I am trying, I am trying to tell you how it felt!” He stops only long enough to meet my eyes with his blazing electric blue before whirling back to pacing. “A year, Marguerite! A year of your contempt, your laughter, knowing you were laughing at me! At _me!_ But begad, I could not end it because we were such fools as to let our pride shroud the truth.

“All I needed was an explanation, one damned thing to tell me I could trust you… and all you needed was trust, one damned thing to tell you that you could tell me. A vicious cycle.”

“Pride of some sort is always the downfall of humanity,” I murmur.

“You never hurt for me, did you?” His question surprises me into looking straight at him. His lazy tone was gone long ago, and none of his merry cheer is present now. Only worry, and exhaustion, and pain, etched soul-deep in the depth of his eyes. And earnestness.

“What do you mean, hurt for you?”

“It hurt, that year… but it wasn’t because of me, was it?” His back is turned to me as he paces again. “You were lonely, you were frustrated, but you never spent night after night standing outside my door because your stupid pride would not let you apologise, did you? My façade was so perfect, so complete, even the one I loved the most could not love through it.”

I look back, and am saddened to notice that no, I never did. That young Margot from the convent and, more recently, the stage, was romantic. She was in love with the idea of falling in love, so when a handsome young lord appeared to sweep her away to England, what she fell in love with was the idea of being in love with him. While he loved her, she loved the mirage around her – of new life, of new love, and of a new, glimmering world.

And when her love for it all was tested, it failed. It fell through like the straw castle it was. No wonder Percy is so reluctant to give his heart fully to me again – like giving a destructive, greedy child a Christmas ornament when she has already broken another.

“I will give you the truth, as I should have done from the start: No, I did not,” I answer quietly.

No excuses, no explanations, and no tacked-on flowery nonsense. I see the tension leave his shoulders in a bad way – the defeated looseness to it is frightening. “I did love you,” I admit, softly, to myself as much as to him.

“How? You thought me an idiot.” Percy’s voice is bitter, and I need not imagine what has made it so.

The old Percy – fresh, candid, slightly scatter-brained Percy from the autumn courtship we shared – was one my foolish, girlish heart loved, however weakly. He was brutally, innocently honest, and very tactile in his affections. He was generous and brave and liberal… and so much stronger than I thought. I tell him as much, and Percy half-turns toward me hesitantly.

Oh, I can see now the vulnerability that he shields so carefully. Mr. Darcy’s harsh words in the carriage ride to Dover come to mind, and I flinch. It is small wonder he thinks that way….

The mattress dips beside me and the warmth of Percy’s body hovers near me. _Mon Dieu_ , but he is like a human furnace! And as cold as I am, I find it very hard not to burrow into the warmth. I miss Percy – the Percy who laughed with me before our wedding – more than I realised.

The warmth envelops me, and I snuggle into it like a child into a blanket before I realise what exactly is happening. Percy is embracing me as though he would never let go, something that I only take a moment to be astonished at before I gladly throw my arms around him, mindful of the injuries he sustained. His head rests on top of mine, the slender fingers I have not felt since that fateful day almost a year ago making a message known to me, a message I need no words to understand: “I missed you.”

And with my head resting lightly on his chest, with my own chilled hands, I tell him, “I missed you too.”

We sit there for an eternity and a moment, until a knock on the door brings Percy back out of the silent world that was, for a while, ours and ours only. “Enter,” he calls, tapping an apology on my shoulder before he releases me. I try to move, only to wince as my injured feet once more make themselves known.

The knock was another one of the crew with a basin of water, a rag, and some bandages. Percy takes them and thanks him, before turning back to me. The crewman shuts the door behind him as Percy sets the basin down and kneels in front of me.

“May I?”

I nod; I was willing to do it myself, but if he wants to…

I hiss when the water touches the first sore scratch. I bite my lip as Percy expertly cleans them, never lingering longer than necessary, never hurting more than he needs to. Finally he sits back with an air of defeat and cocks his head at one throbbing wound in my heel. “What is it?” I ask.

“There’s a stone lodged in it, and it will hurt to pick it out.”

“Let me do it.” I lift my foot and take a look; yes, it is lodged in deeper than can be attended to without more pain. Still, it cannot be left there. I reach in and pull it out, stiffening as the blood is freed. Percy takes it back gently, cleaning it and beginning to bandage the wounds.

Once he ties off the last bandage, he sits back on his heels again and shrugs. “We cannot do more until we dock at Dover, but it cannot be that long now. I guess that shall have to do, what?”

“And your back, Percy?” He looks startled. “Oh, don’t stare at me like that! I saw you; it must hurt very much. If it is not as bad as Mr. Darcy’s or Armand’s it at least hurts too much to go without cleaning, at least until we dock. Please, Percy.”

His eyes meet mine, and in them I see hope – hope for what, exactly? Still, he smiles and begins to unbutton the shirt. I cannot deny the effect that has on me – or the effect Percy still has on me – but I push it down fiercely and wring out the rag as he bares his back. I have to bite back a growl. It’s not as bad as Armand’s were, back then, but it is still very bad. Still, the dirt is the worst of it. I clean it as tenderly as I can, though Percy still tenses when I clean a particularly deep cut. I have not done this for quite some time, but we shall have to make do with what we have.

Finally, his wounds are finished as well, and he is tugging on a clean shirt when another knock sounds – softly, almost timidly. “Enter!” Percy calls again, and Armand’s dark hair peeks around the door.

“What is it, Armand?” I inquire, as my poor brother seems too scared to speak. The next words strike fear into my heart.

“Blakeney… it is Darcy.”

“What about him?” Percy’s voice is sharp at once. He stands quickly and reaches for the door, pulling it open with a harsh yank. Armand shivers and murmurs something I can only barely catch, “He’s dying.”

“Then for God’s sake, don’t let him!” Percy dashes outside, presumably for Darcy’s room, and Armand looks at me helplessly. I lift my head and say, “Take me there.” My brother, for once, obeys without question.

However, when Armand and I do make our slow way into Darcy’s cabin, Percy, who is keeping vigil over the unconscious soldier, says miserably, “Leave me alone. Please.”

Is he dead?

Instantly the guilt washes over me. It was I who dragged him here; though he came of his own free will, it was I who told him there was any travelling to be done. Darcy was Percy’s faithful lieutenant and friend during that dreadful year, and I think they slowly came to regard each other as brothers. And it was I who came barging in unwittingly, and destroyed it all. Percy would be within his rights to be furious with me.

I creep in, slowly and painfully, like a mouse, and eventually am noticed. Percy tugs me onto his lap, and I slip my fingers around his hands in a gesture of comfort I am not sure reaches him.

Darcy’s dark hair is tumbled about his deathly white face, and I can clearly see thick lashes and a straight nose – all terribly, grimly, still! Percy will never forgive himself if Darcy dies tonight… and I have a strong presentiment that _I_ will not forgive myself either.

I know not how long we sit there, hoping against hope that the inch Percy had granted him back on the cliffs had been won, and that we would not be carrying a corpse to his sister. To lose a member now, on the rise of its power, the League would suffer a huge loss, especially such a vital member as this one by all accounts had been.

Darcy startles awake, crying, “Percy, where is Elizabeth?”


	6. Lazarus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The long-awaited chapter of this fic is here, guys. I'm so sorry for making you wait and I'm really sorry about forgetting this one. However, it's been sitting, complete, in my files for about half a year and I hope it doesn't disappoint. I'll be going back and making back-edits from time to time, so you might see me some more!

_“Percy, where is Elizabeth?”_

As the nightmare fades before my eyes I hear a crash, and a hiss of pain, and then breathless, nervous laughter – the kind one laughs when something spooks them, but is not the danger they think it is. “What the _hell_ , Darcy?” Percy chokes indignantly, while I identify the tinkling laughter to come from Lady Blakeney. I peek over the edge of the bed, and there lie my lord and lady in a heap, obviously having tumbled from the chair situated by my bedside.

“Hello, Lady Blakeney,” I rasp in greeting, my throat hacking dryly. “Did I interrupt something?” I watch, bemused, as all that inquiry does is send her into more paroxysms of laughter. Oh well.

Percy coughs and sits up, and glares at me. What did _I_ do? “If you ever die, Fitz, you might as well have the demmed decency to stay dead, what?” he grumbles. I bark out a laugh which turns into coughing, at which point both Blakeneys cease their shenanigans and look at me.

I wink. “What has a man to do for some water on this ship?” I joke. But in all honesty, I feel like I died of thirst and then came back to life. Did I inhale salt water or something?

When I have drunk enough to soothe my parched throat, the Blakeneys launch into their tale, alternatively telling it from either perspective and answering each other’s questions along the way. It is almost as if they have no idea how adorable they are – although, in all probability they do not, fools in love that they are. I laugh to myself as exhaustion takes me, and they take no notice as my eyes drift closed and my mouth curves up in a smile. My brother shall be happy. Very happy indeed.

I only hope that Elizabeth and I can be so.

* * *

Percy and Marguerite lead me as I stumble into the small house in Dover where those whose homes are farther from the shore than a few hours’ ride can rest after a trip. Percy ruffles my hair and asks, “Do you remember last March?”

My face heats up. Of course I remember! It has been far too soon for me – or the rest of the League who were there that that night, for that matter – to forget. Percy laughs at the sight of my face and says, “For the sake of your privacy, Darcy, I should take you to your room immediately, what?” I nod even as Tony, who has overheard, chuckles.

“What happened last March?” Marguerite inquires innocently, which only makes me flush more. Tony and Percy laugh again, then pat my head comfortingly. We all go inside as Percy whispers the tale to his wife, who is giggling by the time we reach the dining room.

Oh no, I still have that handkerchief of Elizabeth’s on my person…

Finally I reach my room, which is still chilly in the October air, but I collapse into bed with barely a wince and a sigh. I can relax. I straighten up and change into a clean shirt and trousers before I put away my torn garments and lie down again. Good old England!

A knock sounds on my door and I barely have time to say, “Come in!” before Percy peeks around the door and says, “Are you alright, then, Darcy?”

“It is good to be home,” I say in reply, gratitude and exhaustion tinting my tone even as I blink myself to wakefulness. “Thank you, Percy. Without you I would have died.”

“And quite right too!” I flinch involuntarily at the anger in his voice. “You insubordinate bounder, what on earth possessed you to get so demmed close to the action? My God, Darcy, you attract trouble like honey attracts bees. I shudder to think of what could have happened if Marguerite and I had awoken any later than we did.” He flops down on my bed so vehemently it nearly sends me flying.

I avert my eyes. Though I had wanted to watch until he was safe, I knew there was no true excuse for going against his orders. “I have nothing to say to that.”

“You could have _died_ ,” he states, his face a mask of anger. “At this moment we might have been sitting in vigil around a dead body. At this moment we might have been bearing a corpse back to your sister. Of all the demmed deuced things you could have done, why did you _watch?_ ”

My silence is answer enough for him, it seems, because he throws himself down on the pillow beside me and huffs. “Lud love you, Fitz; of all the men on my team, you were the one who understood. You are brilliant and brave and so incredibly headstrong that sometimes I want to throw you into the demmed Channel, but you are who you are and the only thing I can do about it is try not to kill you when you try tricks like that.”

We laugh. It feels good, even though the bruising on my back and chest makes even breathing too hard painful.

He cuffs me lightly on the cheek. “That,” says he, “is for putting yourself in unnecessary danger. Still, not all the impulsive foolishness was for nothing… I have yet to thank you for bringing Marguerite to me.”

“Anytime, Percy,” I reply.

“Rest well, brother,” Percy says, standing and making his way to the door. I hear the door shut, and the relief of a mission accomplished refreshes my tired heart, Hope comes with it; I may start the journey to Pemberley soon, and perhaps Charles would like my company for the shooting at Netherfield this year…


End file.
